Chapter Text
Katie liked visiting the tide pools on the edge of Marmora Bay. It was fun to follow her father—and sometimes her brother or other members of the Marine Institute staff—around while they looked through the pools, cataloging specimens and making notes. She didn’t know what the notes were for exactly, though. Her father had told her once it involved a lot of counting, which Katie didn’t really understand that well yet.
Her dad had a tendency to ramble, so whenever she was bored of listening to him explain things to others, she would watch the waves. Today, she was perched on a rock, kneeling as she kept a watch out for dolphins or sea lions. It was a way to pass the time when she wasn’t allowed to hold anything except for the odd sea hare—and sometimes not even that, as was the case today. She could tell the tide was coming in, so soon they would have to leave and go back to the Marmora Bay Marine Institute, where her father worked.
While Katie liked visiting the tide pools, sometimes she wished it was a little more exciting.
She was about to return to where her father and brother were sitting, when she caught sight of a flash of purple in the water. Her gaze snapped in the direction of the creature, and she caught a glimpse of a dorsal fin from some kind of shark disappearing beneath the surface. Katie’s brow furrowed in irritation as she pouted—she wasn’t very good at identifying different species, not like her father was, so she couldn’t tell what type it was.
She could only tell that something was… weird about it. The dorsal fin belonged to something that was huge and light lavender, which looked like it had faint, off-white stripes running along the length of its tail. Not like any shark that she had ever seen.
Hastily, she slid off the rock she was perched on and hurried back to her father as quickly as she could, taking care not to slip on any of the rocks bordering the pools. When she got to his side, she patted his arm, trying to get his attention before the creature disappeared entirely. She could still see its dorsal fin poking just above the surface of the water when she glanced back at it—
“Oh, good, pigeon,” her father said, smiling at her as he gathered her under his arm. “We just found an octopus, do you want to see it?”
Katie whined as her expression grew even more irritated—well, she did want to see the octopus, but she wanted to know what the big shark was more! At her father’s question, she shook her head, squirming out from under his arm and looking back out over the water in a desperate attempt to spot the creature again. “I saw a shark, Dad!” she said, bouncing a little bit on her toes in excitement. “It was big and purple and—”
“Oh, big and purple?” her father asked, trying to contain his chuckles—her brother seemed amused too.
“Sharks can’t be purple, Katie,” Matt said, sticking his tongue out at her.
“Can too!” Katie insisted. “I saw one! It was just there!”
Her father reached out to ruffle her hair as he sighed. “Alright, that’s enough, you two,” he said calmly. “How about you go and try to find this purple shark, pigeon? We’ll be here documenting octopuses if you need us.”
Katie glanced at the octopus—it was a small, red thing, not like the huge one they had back at the institute. She knew she probably wasn’t going to be allowed to hold it, even if she asked, so instead, she left them to their observations, and went back to the rock she had been watching the waves from. She peered out over the water very carefully, in the hope that she’d spot the creature when it came to the surface again.
“Now, Matt, can you identify this species?” she heard her father asking.
“Octopus… ru—rubescens?” her brother responded, and Katie saw him tilt his head to the side out of the corner of her eye. He looked rather unsure of himself, but he knew more scientific names than Katie did…
“Yes, very good!”
Katie was about ready to give up—maybe she really had just been imagining it—but then she spotted another flash of a purple fin in the distance. She perked up, trying to see what it was better this time, but couldn’t quite manage it… and the creature was getting away. She frowned, glancing back at her father and brother. Both of them were too distracted by the little octopus that her father was now holding in his hands to notice if she snuck off.
Just for a minute, just to see what the creature was, and then she’d be right back. And her father had said she should try finding it… she was sure she’d be fine. She was four now, after all, and she knew how to handle herself. This was going to be an adventure!
Carefully, she traversed the slippery rocks as she moved along the shore, disappearing out of sight from her father and brother behind a larger grouping of rocks. She tried to keep her eyes peeled for the shark as she walked, taking care not to step too close to the water—she didn’t want to fall in, and her father’s warnings against going into the water without supervision lingered in the back of her mind, but she pushed them aside.
When she found out what the creature was, she could tell her dad and he’d be so impressed that she had managed to find it all by herself!
She froze in place when she heard soft chirps in the distance, listening to the sound over the light roll of the waves against the shore. The noises reminded her of the dolphins they had back at the marine institute, the ones that had gotten beached on shore and needed rehabilitation. Her eyes widened—she hesitated to go back and get her father, though. Her curiosity won out, in the end, and she rounded a boulder that divided the cove from the rest of the beach, peering around the rocks to try and spot the dolphin.
Except it wasn’t a dolphin… it was a merman—two of them, actually.
They were a lot less human-looking than Katie thought they ought to be, based on the stories she had heard from her mother—but her mother always said they were just fairy tales. Her eyes widened as she stared in awe. One of them was an adult, and the other one was small enough that Katie assumed it must have been a child, probably around her age. They were purple, with sleek fur on their upper bodies and scaled tails—the adult’s tail seemed to stretch on forever, with his tail fin disappearing beneath the waves. The adult also had large, fluffy looking ears with a single streak of lighter fur along the inner edges—which were markings that the child seemed to have inherited, although his fur was a few shades darker, and he had a couple of white swirl markings along his sides and arms.
She spotted a flash of bright yellow eyes when the child turned in her direction, though he didn’t seem to have spotted her. Instead, he clambered around the free space on the rock, staring down into the water. Katie thought that perhaps he was watching fish dart around down there and was waiting to dive in after one—though he seemed to be getting rather impatient, since she could see his tail fin twitched back and forth. Meanwhile, the adult appeared to be dozing, resting his chin on one of his arms with the claws on his other hand just barely skimming the top of the waves.
The child shifted, sliding across the rock, tracking a large shadow under the water as he moved. Then, his ears perked, and his expression brightened. Another adult merman surfaced—this one was light lavender, with white facial and swirl-like markings covering his body. He let out a high pitched whistle around the fish he was holding in his jaws and the child copied him. Carefully, the lavender-furred adult deposited the fish beside the child before sinking back into the water again and disappearing.
The child took one look at the fish, and then refused to pay it any mind. Instead, he clambered around the rock and over the purple-furred adult’s back, knocking the wind out of him. The adult let out a displeased trill as he lifted his head to watch the child. However, he didn’t appear to be annoyed so much as exasperated and drowsy. He kept careful watch over the child, letting out an amused purr as the child leaned precariously over the edge of the rock, balancing on his hands as his claws dug into the dull face of his perch.
Katie wondered where these creatures had come from—people knew of mermen as a concept, but nobody had ever seen one outside of movies and stories. She wondered what her father would have said about them, had he been here instead of down the beach from her. With both the child and the purple-furred adult distracted, Katie crept further forward… just to get a better look at them.
And then she slipped, and tumbled into the water.
As she broke the surface, she sputtered, trying to catch her breath. The water wasn’t that deep here, and she was a pretty decent swimmer, but she wasn’t supposed to go into the water without her father watching her—and then, she felt something grab onto her, lifting her out of the water so that it could hold her. Before she got her bearings and managed to wipe the seawater out of her eyes, she thought it was her father, but then her fingers dug into short fur.
She met the solid yellow gaze of the lavender-furred merman she had seen disappear beneath the waves a couple of minutes ago. She froze, staring at him with wide eyes when she noticed that he appeared to have very sharp teeth. However, the merman chirped softly, tilting his head to the side as he met her gaze. Then, he leaned closer, sniffing and nudging at her with his nose, and she laughed when he snorted, blowing a puff of air into her face.
Then, she noticed the other adult had entered the water at this point, although he seemed much more apprehensive about approaching—even going so far as to gather the child into his arms. He stopped about two feet away, only keeping his head above the water as he tilted it to the side. The child squirmed until he was finally released, and then he approached. However, when the lavender-furred adult let out a warning trill—a noise which reminded Katie of her mother scolding her for doing something inappropriate—the child let out a displeased chirp and pouted.
She was set carefully back onto the rocks she had slipped off of, but the mermen didn’t move. All three of them watched her with varying degrees of fascination—the child in particular seemed to not know what to make of her, as if he had never been this close to a human before.
“Um… thank you,” she said politely. Then, she held out her hand, since it was the polite thing to do. The lavender-furred adult tilted his head to the side, ears flicking curiously before he held out his own hand in return. Gingerly, Katie reached out to take hold of one of his fingers, being careful of his claws, and shook it. She was unable to contain her giggles when both adults exchanged perplexed looks, as if they had never seen a handshake before.
“Katie?!”
She started, hearing her father’s voice from down the beach. In an instant, the perplexed expressions vanished from the mermen’s faces—the purple-furred merman gathered the child up in his arms and disappeared back into the water without so much as a goodbye, with an expression that Katie could only describe as terror. However, the lavender-furred one lingered for a moment, staring at her. He held up his hand, making a motion as if telling her to stay put, before he dove back into the water, tail slapping against the surface.
Katie didn’t turn to greet her father when he arrived. Instead, she stared at the spot where the mermen had been with wide eyes, water dripping from her clothes and hair.
“Pigeon, what did I tell you about going into the water by yourself?” her father asked as he scooped her up, tucking her inside his jacket when she shivered against the cold. “Don’t scare me like that!”
“Did you find her, dad?” Matt’s voice came from a couple of yards away, and he appeared from around the rocks a moment later, scrambling to join them.
“Yes, I found her, thank god,” her father sighed, and when Katie looked up at him, he looked about as exasperated as he sounded.
“Dad! Dad, I saw a merman!” Katie said excitedly. “A whole family of them! One saved me when I fell in!” Her shivering was forgotten as soon as she started recounting how she had watched the child and the purple-furred merman on the rocks, how the lavender-furred one had been hunting and then fished her out of the water almost as soon as she had fallen in.
Her father smiled, though when he spoke he sounded awfully tired. “Well, you had quite the adventure, didn’t you?” he asked before kissing her forehead. “Now, come on… your mother is going to be very upset that you went into the water by yourself—”
“They were purple and had glowing eyes, Dad!” she insisted. She peeked over his shoulder, hoping to catch another glimpse of the mermen before they left—hoping that one of them had lingered, just so that she could prove they had been there—but there was nothing besides the waves rolling into the shore with the rising tide.